Our Catholic Heritage, Volume IV

The Province of Texas in 1762

7

niche, was an elegantly sculptured image in honor of Our Lady of Sorrows and Our Lady of Pilar. The church was furnished with two confessionals, several benches and a pulpit. Beneath the two towers there were two small chapels: one dedicated to Saint Michael, with a very pleasing altar, and the other used as a baptistry. Here there was a baptismal font of copper with its cover, three anointers, and a silver shell. The sacristy was a room with an arched ceiling twelve varas square and was fitted with closets and drawers, where three chalices with their patens were kept. together with a ciborium, cruets, a tray, and a censer, all made of silver. There were also several missals, twelve complete sets of vestments made of Persian silk and ten of damask, three copes, a good supply of altar cloths and various ornaments for the celebration of the different feasts of the Church. The friary had the necessary cells for the missionaries and other rooms for offices and storage. It was one-story high with a pleasing archway along the side. All the rooms and cells were decorated with good taste. Adjoining the living quarters of the missionaries was a large hall, where the looms of the mission were installed. It also had two storerooms. Here woolen and cotton cloth of various kinds were woven for the use of the mission inmates. Blankets, too, were made here. In the adjoining store- rooms the wool and cotton used were also stored together with the combs, cards, spinning wheels and other equipment. The granary was in a separate building, where sixteen hundred bushels of corn and one hundred bushels of beans were kept. For the cultivation of the fields the mission had forty-five yokes of oxen and the necessary number of plows, plowshares, hoes, and other tools. Its blacksmith shop was fully equipped with its anvil, bellows, hammers, tongs, and sledge hammers. The mission was also well provided with all the tools necessary for carpentry and cabinet making, which were used by the Indians in keeping their houses and the entire mission property in repair and in making the furniture required for their needs. The Indian pueblo proper was arranged in two tiers of stone houses on either side of the church and monastery, all enclosed within a rectangular wall for its protection. Each Indian family was provided with the neces- sary pots and pans, its grindstone for corn, and a flat iron for cooking their tortillas (corn cakes) over the coals. The cultivated fields were fenced and irrigated by a ditch that led the water from the river, where a stone dam had been built. The mission owned a ranch, where it had several houses for the caretakers who looked after the two hundred mares, one

Powered by